Impact of localized gas injection on ICRF coupling and SOL parameters in JET-ILW H-mode plasmas

Recent JET-ILW [1,2] experiments reiterated the importance of tuning the plasma fuelling in order to optimize ion cyclotron resonance frequency (ICRF) heating in high power H-mode discharges. By fuelling the plasma from gas injection modules (GIMs) located in the mid-plane and on the top of the machine instead of adopting the more standardly used divertor GIMs, a considerable increase of the ICRF antenna coupling resistances was achieved with moderate gas injection rates (<1.5 × 10²² e/s). This effect is explained by an increase of the scrape-off-layer density in front of the antennas when mid-plane and top fuelling is used. By distributing the gas injection to optimize the coupling of all ICRF antenna arrays simultaneously, a substantial increase in the ICRF power capability and reliability was attained. Although similar core/pedestal plasma properties were observed for the different injection cases, the experiments indicate that the RF-induced impurity sources are reduced when switching from divertor to main chamber gas injection.